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[TMA] Mining in missions

So, they say there is this thing call Asteroids in missions and I heard you can shoot it with a mining laser.

The question is:
What missions is best for mining? How much minerals can you realistically extract out of it? Is there low level missions suited for mining? What about mining missions?

With hulkageddon and high mineral prices on the horizon, is it possible to whore out your mission toon and offer miners services of this type? Would it be reasonable for miners to "buy mining" rights from missioners at motsu and likes?

Mining missions tend to be worthless (unless they've been given a big overhaul in the last year or so). The rewards for the missions tend to be so low, given the time it will take you to mine the required minerals, that you may as well mine Tritanium in a regular belt and sell on the market. If you're after LP, you may as well go for another Agent Division as the LP/hour will be higher for courier and combat missions than mining missions. You may even want to try a different NPC Corporation as the items in the LP Stores for those corporations that offer mining missions also tend to be pretty poor.

In fact, the only reason I can think of for taking a mining mission is if you're out in NPC null-sec. Once you've cleared out any spawns, the game will treat the deadspace site as an asteroid belt, meaning it'll spawn regular belt rats. When I used to live in Curse and run missions for the Angel Cartel, we'd check the lower level agents for missions every now and then in the hope that we'd get a mining mission. Once we did, we'd accept it, warp to it, clear out any spawns, bookmark it and dump the bookmark in the corp hangar. As long as you were on, you could chain the belt like you would a regular belt. When you had logged off, your corpmates could do it. I remember one time when we had three of these secret asteroid belts to chain, all up in the same system, all at the same time. Everyone in the corp was flying unprobable T3s for missioning, so there was no risk of getting probed out, assuming you got rid of any target painting frigates first.

But.

If you're referring to the asteroids that spawn in some regular combat missions, they can be a nice way to mine in peace as a corp, but not really worth it if you're doing it solo. Back when I started playing in 2008, I joined a mining corporation and, every now and then, someone would report that they've got a mission with a lot of mineable asteroids in it. For the sake of added security, if enough people were around, we would run a mining op in the mission. It only worked in missions with acceleration gates or a structure that had to be killed because as soon as you complete the objective and warp off from the mission, the mission site despawns, along with any asteroids it contained. If the target was in the same room as the asteroids, that would put any miners at risk of getting killed. Also, whether the Orca would get through acceleration gates or not is another issue.

At the time, probing wasn't that widespread so we were unlikely to get disturbed, meaning we could safely mine into jetcans. However, given that probing has been overhauled since then, I'm not sure how safe it would be. Yes, probers will be aiming for people in faction battleships and T3s to grief, but an Orca on scan will also likely be an attractive target for them. In addition to this, given the prevalence of gravimetric sites in high-sec (it has definitely received a buff since the probing changes), probers may in fact be on the lookout for miners in deadspace, meaning your suggested solution to the problem isn't really a solution at all ...

Haven't heard of booby traps. Missions despawn when you hand them in, not one second earlier. You get I think 7 days to hand in a mission, with a full respawn after downtime. With certain missions, that is not only lots of asteroids, but also nice bounties and loot. This is best done ina group of people. Grab a bunch of L4s (or whatever there is, check the survival guide for asteroid numbers), clear them out with your gang, switch to hulks and be happy carebears. Check with the mission descriptions if the acceleration gates allow Orcas, I don't know off hand, I think they did, I am sure I used mine as a salvage and loot hauler in a cleared out WC lvl 4.
Pros of mission mining:

relatively safe, you need to be probed out, which if you watch your scanner gives you ample of warning time to gtfo

no competition for roids, in normal belts the roids are either almost depleted or many people are in them and mine the same roid as you, annoying the least

Missions despawn when you hand them in, not one second earlier. You get I think 7 days to hand in a mission, with a full respawn after downtime. With certain missions, that is not only lots of asteroids, but also nice bounties and loot.

Are you sure? I haven't done mining in missions for a few years, but, back when I did, the mission would despawn after downtime if you completed the objective, even if you didn't hand it in. That means if you killed the final rat, destroyed the objective building or looted the mission item, you had until downtime to harvest asteroids before the mission would despawn. The only way to get around this would be to clear the mission of all rats and enemies, bar whichever rat triggered the objective, and then mine the mission. If you don't complete the mission in its entirety before downtime, it'll respawn in its entirety after downtime, so you'll have a mission full of rats to kill again.

Again, I haven't checked this in 2, possibly 3 years, so I may be wrong.

Missions despawn when you hand them in, not one second earlier. You get I think 7 days to hand in a mission, with a full respawn after downtime. With certain missions, that is not only lots of asteroids, but also nice bounties and loot.

Are you sure? I haven't done mining in missions for a few years, but, back when I did, the mission would despawn after downtime if you completed the objective, even if you didn't hand it in. That means if you killed the final rat, destroyed the objective building or looted the mission item, you had until downtime to harvest asteroids before the mission would despawn. The only way to get around this would be to clear the mission of all rats and enemies, bar whichever rat triggered the objective, and then mine the mission. If you don't complete the mission in its entirety before downtime, it'll respawn in its entirety after downtime, so you'll have a mission full of rats to kill again.

Again, I haven't checked this in 2, possibly 3 years, so I may be wrong.